Audi

Audiphiles, prepare to have your lederhosen wrinkled. While speaking with Autocar, Peter Birtwhistle went and called the legendary SWB Sport Quattro “bloody ugly.” While Birtwhistle is currently the chief designer at Mazda Europe, he’s particularly well-suited to comment on the lines of the boxy Audi. After all, he designed the thing. According to the designer, the biggest problem facing the car is that it rides on the Audi 80 platform, and massaging the Sport Quattro design over those cumbersome bones required some sacrifices. Still, when taken a grain of salt borrowed from the time period, the car is as good-looking as it gets.

Of course, our opinion could be slightly tainted by the fact that Audi only minted a mere 200 of the cars as homologation specials. Anything built to justify a race car nets an automatic win in our book, and the SWB Sport Quattro is no different.

By the year 2020, Audi hopes to be the “leading premium seller of electric vehicles,” Franciscus van Meel, the automaker’s manager for electric mobility, told AutoWeek during a recent technical workshop at the company’s headquarters in Ingolstadt, Germany. In addition to launching a number of hybrid vehicles (including the A8 and Q5) over the next few years, Audi plans to debut a plug-in hybrid in 2014.

Exactly what sort of plug-in hybrid we’ll actually see hasn’t been disclosed just yet, but the whole business is part of Audi’s e-tron division – the folks that gave us beauties like the R8-based e-tron supercar (pictured above) that debuted at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show.

Furthermore, Audi’s board member for technology, Michael Dick, says that by 2020, he wants to see the automaker’s internal combustion engines improve efficiency by 30 percent, with 5 percent of the brand’s lineup to be purely electric. That’s a tall order, indeed, but with parent company Volkswagen AG aiming to be the number one producer of hybrid and electric cars before the end of the next decade, the four-ringed automaker’s quest for electrification isn’t as far-fetched as you might think.

If you were surprised Audi chose to forgo the S1 nameplate for the top-spec version of the A1 premium hatch, hold on to your hats, because the rumor mill is spinning up again. This time, reports direct from Germany suggest that Ingolstadt may choose to skip the S1 altogether and go straight to the top with a new RS1.

The move would necessitate the adaption of the A1′s chassis to accommodate all-wheel drive as previously reported, with power potentially coming from the same 2.0-liter TFSI engine found in the Volkswagen Golf GTI, and the Mini Cooper JCW in its sites. A series of visual upgrades would undoubtedly distinguish the RS1 from its more pedestrian stablemates, with reports tipping its arrival for early 2012.

If your jaw dropped at the site of the Audi Quattro concept unveiled in Paris, you weren’t alone. The aluminum and carbon fiber throwback was one of the best looking – and all-around most enticing – show cars on display at Versailles. And if you ask the people in charge, it could be destined for showrooms in short order.

The thing about Audi is that when it does a concept car, it does just do a rolling model. It engineers the thing. It does its homework. And in the case of the Audi Quattro, three years of development work have reportedly already gone into it. According to Motor Trend, both Audi’s and the Volkswagen Group’s chief execs are eager to put it into production, although their visions for how it’ll get there are a little different.

Group CEO Martin Winterkorn reportedly wants to put it into serial production at around 35,000 units annually in order to keep pricing to a reasonable level, offering a full range of engine options in the process. Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, meanwhile, sees the Quattro as a niche product, sticking with the solitary turbo five and all-wheel drive set-up that featured in both the show car and the ’80s icon that was its inspiration.

Automakers are always looking to add a tinge of green to their fleets, and Audi is reportedly ready to drop a few cylinders on its flagship sedan. The 2012 Audi A8 will be offered as a hybrid, with a four-cylinder gasoline engine being paired with an electric motor. The A8 Hybrid will likely be offered after Audi has launched a front-wheel drive six-cylinder diesel version, both of which should provide quite a different driving experiencecompared to the 372 horsepower 4.2-liter V8 currently available.

The move to a smaller cylinder count comes as automakers begin to prepare for tougher CAFE standards. Audi, not wanted to be left behind, sees that Mercedes-Benz and BMW are already moving to more efficient powertrains. Mercedes, who already launched its S400 Hybrid, is also adding a four-cylinder version of its flagship model – a 2.2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder diesel in the S250 CDI model. BMW has a different take on how it will produce more efficient luxury sedans. Rather than reducing the number of cylinders, BMW will add electric motors to its six and eight cylinder engines, so for the time being there are no plan to put a four-cylinder in the engine bay of a 7 Series.